“Historically, the federal government has been fairly cautious in writing public health laws not to exceed its authority under the Constitution. The federal law and regulations dealing with quarantines, for example, does not claim the power to impose a quarantine on any American anywhere in the nation. Rather, they permit quarantines of individuals entering the country or crossing state borders, while leaving the question of whether to quarantine individuals within a state’s borders to the state itself.
Similarly, the raft of stay-at-home and business closure orders imposed on many Americans, as well as various orders closing public schools, have typically come from state or local officials. And, in many cases, these officials have already signaled that they plan to keep these orders in place well beyond Trump’s May 1 deadline.”
“The SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes the disease swept across the globe not because of the WHO’s errors but because of a “very fragmented, chaotic, state-centric response,” according to Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.
And now, with over 2 million reported cases and 125,000 deaths worldwide, countries “failing in their response have decided WHO is the culprit,” says Ashish Jha, a professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.”
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“Most experts agree there are some legitimate criticisms of how the agency has handled the Covid-19 global health crisis, particularly in how it responded to China’s initial delays and suppression of key information. Other critiques, they say, are less founded.”
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“On January 22, just three weeks after first being notified of the virus’s existence, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus convened an emergency meeting to determine if the outbreak qualified as a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), the agency’s term for an “extraordinary event” that requires a coordinated international response — like SARS, H1N1, and Ebola outbreaks in 2014 and 2019. The experts couldn’t agree and decided to meet again. After the director-general traveled to Beijing to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on January 29, a PHEIC was declared on January 30.
This declaration activated WHO measures to “address travel, trade, quarantine, screening, treatment” as well as national measures in countries that have tied their pandemic response plans to WHO declarations. “I called for WHO to do it a little earlier,” says Gostin, “but it had no impact on the epidemic.” Jha agrees. “I think they could have called it when they initially met, but it wouldn’t have made a big difference,” he says.”
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“all the experts Vox interviewed agreed that the US government’s lack of preparation for Covid-19 was not a result of WHO delays.”
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“ABC News reports US intelligence agencies warned the White House and the Pentagon of the disease as early as November. In January, trade adviser Peter Navarro warned the White House that the novel coronavirus could kill half a million Americans. In February, the US lost valuable weeks failing to develop effective testing. As late as February 27, Trump told a press briefing the virus would “disappear.” The next day, the first American died of Covid-19.
“WHO is not responsible for America not heeding the warnings of its own scientists and security apparatus — for two months,” says Jha. “That’s laughable.””
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“WHO has offered little criticism of governments’ responses.”
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“More than 430,000 people traveled from China to over 17 American cities after the virus was discovered but before the ban; another 40,000 people arrived to the US from China after the ban went into place.”
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“Although the WHO has not publicly criticized the American travel ban, it doesn’t recommend travel or trade restrictions during disease outbreaks, both because they often don’t work and because they can make disease response more difficult. Kamradt-Scott recalls firsthand his difficulty in trying to get from Australia to West Africa during the 2014 Ebola outbreak, when all but two commercial airlines had stopped flying there. “It’s not simply that it causes economic damage, but that it impedes responses,” he says. ”
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“Kamradt-Scott, however, is on the fence. He has just completed a literature review, looking at travel and trade restrictions, and his view is that travel bans “may have helped delay the arrival of the virus.” He predicts that eventually Covid-19 research will cause the WHO to revisit some of its guidelines. “It’s rather fraught. It does create economic problems, but if it can help countries by giving them time to prepare, perhaps it can be justified on that ground.”
But, he adds, “Trump implemented travel restrictions but then did nothing to prepare the country, so again, that really comes back to his administration.””
““When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total,” Trump said at one point. “And that’s the way it’s gotta be. It’s total.”
Trump’s claim is false — governors have broad authority to close schools and businesses in their states.”
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“The irony is that while Trump claims to have dictatorial power, state governors keep calling on him to do more to provide them with the medical supplies they need to make sure each Covid patient can receive adequate medical care. Characteristically, Trump on Monday lied about this state of affairs by claiming “nobody is asking for ventilators.” (Maryland’s Republican governor, Larry Hogan — chair of the National Governors Association — said on Sunday’s installment of This Week that “to say that everybody is completely happy and we have everything we need is not quite accurate.”)”
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“conveying truthful information is not the point of these briefings. Instead, Trump’s objective is to reframe problems as the result of unfair media coverage and feed red meat to his base by sparring with reporters. On Monday, Trump attacked two female reporters — Paula Reid of CBS and Kaitlan Collins of CNN — when they dared to ask him questions about the government’s slow coronavirus response and his dictatorial statements, respectively.
“You are so disgraceful,” Trump admonished Reid at one point. “You know you’re a fake.””
“A campaign-style video President Donald Trump is promoting in an attempt to rewrite the history of his coronavirus response accidentally reveals the truth — that he didn’t really do much during a crucial period in February and early March when the virus was spreading undetected in America, besides downplaying the threat.
The video, which premiered during Monday’s unhinged White House coronavirus task force briefing and was then posted to Trump’s Twitter account, features a timeline of what the video refers to as the president’s “DECISIVE ACTION” during that period. But the list of Trump’s anti-coronavirus actions is far shorter than it might appear as it ticks by your screen.
For one thing, Trump had little to do with a number of the “actions” highlighted in the timeline. For another, the video includes a number of developments that are really nothing to brag about, such as the first US case being reported on January 20 and the CDC testing debacle that put the US behind the curve compared to other countries that have more successfully handled the coronavirus. And it skips right from early February to March, thereby revealing Trump didn’t do much during a period in which proactive measures could’ve been taken, saving lives”
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“instead of being focused on the coronavirus during that India trip, upon his February 26 return, Trump reportedly chastised a number of government officials over the CDC’s February 25 warning that the virus might cause “severe” disruption to American life — not because he thought the analysis was inaccurate, but because it hurt the stock market.”
“Inspectors general are typically seen as nonpolitical operatives and are tasked with an independent watchdog role, overseeing various facets of the government and checking for waste, fraud, and abuse. Trump has clashed with several of them recently as they produced documentation that he views as unflattering to his administration.
That includes Health and Human Services Inspector General Christi Grimm, whom the president railed against after she released a report detailing COVID-19 testing delays and critical supply shortages at U.S. medical centers.
Trump’s move against Glenn Fine follows the president’s Friday termination of Michael Atkinson, the inspector general for the intelligence community, who dealt with the whistleblower report that eventually resulted in Trump’s impeachment. The president did not name a successor.”
“Trump has defended the firing, telling reporters on Saturday during a White House coronavirus task force briefing that the longtime public official was a “total disgrace” for the way he handled a whistleblower complaint that led to the president’s impeachment.”
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“Meanwhile, Atkinson released a lengthy statement Sunday night about his firing, asserting that Trump removed him simply for doing his job.
“It is hard not to think that the president’s loss of confidence in me derives from my having faithfully discharged my legal obligations as an independent and impartial Inspector General,” Atkinson wrote.
Democrats have condemned the firing as an abuse of power and a brazen act of politically motivated retribution by a president emboldened after the Senate acquitted him in his impeachment trial. Republicans have been tepid in their criticism of the action, but some, including Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, said the firing “demands an explanation,” while others largely deferred to the president’s unorthodox leadership style.”
“Millions of Americans losing their jobs may still be able to sign up for Obamacare — but Trump officials haven’t been urging people to grab onto that safety net while they can.
People who’ve lost their workplace health insurance during the coronavirus outbreak may qualify for private coverage through Obamacare, along with generous subsidies, despite President Donald Trump’s decision last week not to re-open signups for everyone. Many may also qualify for free or low-cost coverage under Medicaid, especially in the two-thirds of states that joined Obamacare’s expansion of the low-income health care program.
Some states that depend on Healthcare.gov are trying to broadcast these options to their citizens — through media campaigns, the governors’ microphones, social media and patient groups — while advocates say the federal government needs to bring in money and a marketing plan to help.”
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“most of the 12 states and the District of Columbia that run their own ACA exchanges have reopened their markets.”
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“For those advocacy groups or insurers who do try to spread the word, the enrollment task is made even more challenging by steep cuts the Trump administration made to the government’s Obamacare outreach. That started soon after Trump took office and intensified right through the most recent open enrollment, which ended in mid-December.”
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“the usual red-tape involved in getting people who qualify for special sign-ups into ACA plans has only grown more complicated and cumbersome in the time of social distancing — when people can’t just present the documents they need to an insurance broker and fill out the necessary forms in real-time. The process is even harder if the person trying to get covered doesn’t have access to a computer. During normal signup seasons, people can call for help, go use a library computer, or get help from a broker or ACA navigator.
The Trump administration says its plan to pay Covid-19 hospital bills is better, as it promises to make direct payments for care.
But critics note that’s not health insurance. It won’t help a newly uninsured person who breaks a leg, has a heart attack, or is undergoing chemotherapy.”
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“People who lose jobs can get COBRA, meaning they can extend their job-related insurance after being laid off. But that is massively expensive — particularly for anyone who has just lost their livelihood.”
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“People have just 60 days after losing job-based coverage to get documentation in order and figure out a new plan.”
“Prominent conservative groups are refusing to criticize Republican lawmakers and President Donald Trump for the massive spending package, and polling shows fewer than 1 in 10 Republican voters disapprove of the measure’s passage.
That tells you something about the current state of the conservative movement. When the last Republican president signed the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), otherwise known as the 2008 bank bailout, polling from Gallup found that fewer than half of all Republicans supported it. When President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the $833 billion stimulus passed in the wake of the last economic collapse, only about 30 percent of self-identified conservatives approved, Gallup found.
Now, we’re spending a whole lot more money with a whole lot less opposition.
As Reason Editor at Large Matt Welch put it last week: “There is no more politics of fiscal prudence in America, just a competition to see who can wag the biggest firehose.””
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“If fiscal conservatism still held any cache among Republican lawmakers, voters, and activists, there would have been an outcry about President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress inflating the deficit to record highs over the past three years. It wasn’t all that long ago that grassroots conservatives were toasting the toppling of high-ranking Republicans for lesser slights.”